Visa on Arrival
 

After listening to all of your advice the four women traveling to India used Indiavisaonline.org.in for our visa's . Cost was $99.00 and we have received the paper indicating our status and visa number.
Process was simple and the company was responsive via e-mail.

My question is what do we do when we arrive? Is there a separate line we go to and do we need anything besides our passport and this paper?

Do you know if there are additional information they may want as we only had to answer very few questions for the application.

Thanks, four traveling women

Take your VOA letter, passport and USD cash payment to the VOA counter. Hand them over and wait for them to return your stamped passport to you (usually around 15 mins, more if you arrive with lots of other flights). Once you have your stamped passport join the appropriate immigration line. DO NOT GO DIRECTLY TO THE IMMIGRATION COUNTER. Sorry for the caps but we have seen many people doing this only to be sent back for the stamp :-)

I'm in India right now and entered through Kolkata with an e-Tourist Visa (eTV) which I got from the Indian Government site for $60 with 1 day turnaround. Is that what you have? Crellston seems to be talking about something different.

It may be different at different airports, but at Kolkata you go to a special desk, hand over the printout of your email, boarding pass, and arrival form, have fingerprints and photos taken, and get a stamp in your passport. Then you exit to baggage claim and customs. No one asked any questions at all. The whole process took less than 10 minutes, mostly futzing with the temperamental fingerprint machine. Oh, and the airline hadn't given me the arrival form (which is just like the customs form) so I had to fill one out on the spot.

The airlines won't let you on the plane without seeing the printout of the acceptance email so it's worth having a spare copy. I showed it to them on my cellphone, which worked but caused some pushback.

"Crellston seems to be talking about something different." Indeed he was! I didn't see the India tag - I was referring to Vietnam. Oops! Apologies for the confusion

Agree with "someotherguy". Very simple process. Just came back from india. Be sure to carry e via approval with you even though passport stamped upon entering as some immigration officers may still want to see it. Also,it was pointed out upon arrival in new delhi immigration that those age 70 or older do no need to be finger printed as at that age, the prints are hard to show on their machine. Be sure to go directly to the e-visa line and not any other. Happy travels.

There are clear signboards for eVisa arrivals when you enter the airports. You just need to follow the directions. I have heard from a few friends that the process was quite simple and straightforward.

Some-guy--- how long was your visa for, and are you from USA?

These visas are all single entry, valid for stays up to 30 days. I have a UK passport. The UK was only admitted to this scheme a few weeks before I applied whereas the USA has been in since the beginning.

Does anyone know if the evisa website goes down on the weekends? I'm trying to upload my photo and keep getting the message the server is down ?

Thanks,
Rob

Reply we used indiavisaonline.com
We paid $99.99 which was $60.00 for the Visa and the rest for a service fee. I think there is a coupon or something on line. They were good.

Hi,
we used indianvisaonline.gov.in and the visa came within 1 day, and cost $ 48 US. The online application is very easty to do.

Note that there are three different addresses in this thread for India visas. The last one listed, the .gov address doesn't work for me. Both the .com and .org addresses work; they go to two different websites. I have a 10 year visa in my passport, so I'm not shopping for an India visa, but if I was I would compare the two websites very carefully, especially in regard to service charges.

Fodor's URL parsing is broken: it leaves off the .in suffix of the one you are calling the .gov address. If you put that back on, it goes to the Indian Government site. The other two are commercial agencies.

Thanks, someotherguy! I wondered if the others were travel agencies, but I totally missed the .in after the last address.

I just noticed there's a mishandled .in suffix on the .org address as well: it goes to one commercial agency with the suffix and another, apparently different one, without. Looks like the agencies have bought up every conceivable misspelling of the official address (except .gov, which they cannot get...well, not without taking over a government).

E-Tourist visa facility has been launched by Indian government last November for 43 countries. E-Tourist visa facility will be rolled out by Indian government for Chinese nationals along with Hong Kong and Macao nationals.

Learn More:

http://www.sreestours.com/blog/learn...iting-india-02

https://indianvisaonline.gov.in/visa/tvoa.html

http://www.ndtv.com/topic/visa-on-arrival

I will be posting a good, bad and interesting after I recover from the extreme jet lag but wanted to comment on the BAD. It took us 2 1/2 hours to get through the e- visa line at the Delhi airport on arrival at 1:00 am. We had all of our correct paperwork and did not need to pay anything but the line was so long and there were only two lines open. I know that it is cheaper and maybe more convenient to do the visa on line but after this experience I would go the old fashion route and send the passport out for the visa. This might work fine at one of the smaller India airports but not Delhi.

e-Tourist Visa facility is currently available for holders of passport of following countries: Anguilla, Antigua & Barbuda, Australia, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Brazil, Cambodia, Canada, Cayman Island, Chile, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Fiji, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Kiribati, Laos, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Marshall Islands, Mauritius, Mexico, Micronesia, Montenegro, Montserrat, Myanmar, Nauru, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niue Island, Norway, Oman, Palau, Palestine, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Philippines, Republic of Korea, Republic of Macedonia, Russia, Saint Christopher and Nevis, Samoa, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tonga, Tuvalu, UAE, Ukraine, USA, Vanuatu, Vatican City-Holy See, Vietnam.

Indusdiscoveries----I do not believe "ladyrep" was referring to e-Tourist visa availability for certain countries..........they were discussing the "e-visa" line in Delhi at arrival and lack of personnel to facilitate tourists. Because the e-visa process upon arrival is very slow and arduous, All airports that offer e-visa arrival service in India should pay attention to customer service, especially if tourism is one of the main sources of income.............. We arrived in New Delhi December and experienced the same type of wait............... Arriving at 1 AM in the morning wanting to get a good nights sleep and waiting to be processed for 2 1/2 hours is NOT my idea of enjoyable.............

It took us about a half hour to get through the process. Note we flew in business class and were one of the first off the plane so the line was not too bad. The only problem with the process is that they have to take your fingerprints and they had a difficult time getting good prints from most of the people in line. It was somewhat comical, but then again, we weren't cranky and tired as we slept well on the plane. I don't think that the process took any longer than the much longer line for other passengers entering with a visa that they had procured ahead of time.